FINDING PEACE

Humility Cures Worldliness

⁷ Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

—James 4:8

In ourselves we are not stronger than Satan – Hence we must submit to GOD

Submission is a matter of the will. James commands the reader to make a conscious, volitional choice to submit their imperfect will to God’s perfect will. This is be our daily experience, for daily our natural (flesh) tendency is to rebel against the people and circumstances God uses in our life to facilitate our submission. We need to come to the point that when God’s “submission tests” come, we say “I don’t understand why You are allowing this, but I choose to bow and submit my will to Yours dear Father.”

Key Points

1. Submit therefore – Why “therefore“? Because only the humble receive the grace of God (Jas 4:6–note). Drop your pride, your arrogance and your haughtiness. To be a partaker of God’s grace we must daily choose to submit, to surrender our will, our desires, to God’s will, which is good and acceptable and perfect. Only the lowly person, the humble man or woman will willingly surrender his or her rights to God. Pride ever fights against this sweet surrender! And beloved, this rebellious usurper (still resident even in those who are born from above = the residual fallen flesh) will fight against God’s will until the day we die! That is why Paul instructed Timothy to fight a good fight of faith. Why? Because the world, the flesh and the devil will continually oppose our walk of grace in Christ and try to provoke us to pride, crying out “You have rights”!

2. To submit to God is to find rest! The rule of God is so beneficial that He ought readily to be obeyed. He never commands us to do that which, in the long run, can be injurious to us, nor does He forbid us anything which can be to our real advantage. Our God is so kind, so wise, so full of loving forethought, that it is always be to our best interest to follow His lead. Even if we could be left to choose our own way and were under no bonds of duty, it would be wise and prudent to choose the way of the Lord, for it is the path of pleasantness and safety..

3. Are you quite sure that you are submissive to the divine will as to your rank in society? – These are the people that the LORD has made, this is the place. Have you accepted your position in the scale of worldly wealth? Are you satisfied to be sickly, obscure, or of small ability? Are God’s appointments your contentment?

4. Resist the devil – This is the other side of the basic demand to submit. Submit first. Then resist. Don’t run. Resist! There is no middle ground, no neutrality. Wholehearted submission to God is only possible as they resist God’s archenemy. Stand against him decisively and definitively. Take your stand against the devil. Fear the Lord and you won’t fear the devil! Stand against the adversary in the strength provided by your submission to Christ.

5. Draw near – Come close to God by entering His courts with prayer, praise and thanksgiving, by spending time with Him in His Word, by spending time with Him in corporate worship. But don’t confuse one time Sunday worship as what James means by his command to draw near. To be sure, worship on Sunday can be a special time of drawing near to God, but the practice of drawing near needs to saturate, permeate and “marinate” our lives throughout the week. If we only draw near to worship God on Sunday, we are not really drawing near, but only making an occasional “visit”.

6. Drawing Near to God – THE nearer we come to God, the more graciously will He reveal Himself to us. When the prodigal comes to his father, his father runs to meet him. When the wandering dove returns to the ark, Noah puts out his hand to pull her in unto him.

7. Anyone who is going to serve God must wash their hands before returning to service. As you return from the pandemic restrictions, don’t come with your gift of service to the Lord with dirty hands. Cleanse your hands and purify your hearts.

8. Cleanse hands, ye sinners! and purify hearts, ye two-souled! How appropriate that cleanse and purify follow God drawing near to us who are sinners, whether we be saved sinners or unconverted sinners! Those who are most conscious of His holiness, logically are those who are most acutely convicted of their sin. Oswald Chambers was right when he said that we should “measure our growth in grace by our sensitiveness to sin”.

9. Cleanse… purify – James is obviously calling for far more than “going through the motions” as so often happens in religious rituals. Search me, O God, And know my heart today; Try me, O Savior, Know my thoughts, I pray. See if there be Some wicked way in me; Cleanse me from every sin And set me free.

10. A tree must strike roots downward before it can grow upwards. In like manner we must grow deep in our relationship to God. 

Final Thoughts

One thing that stands out in the Word of God is that the Lord despises the haughty. Under inspiration the psalmist said, “One who has a haughty look and a proud heart, him I will not endure” (Psalm 101:5–note) . And James said, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

“Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true.”